Special Summer Institute Section: Rediscovering Teaching in the NWP Summer Institute

By: NWP Staff
Publication: The Voice, Vol. 9, No. 2
Date: 2004

Summary: As the articles in this section demonstrate, writing project leaders continue to find ways to enhance the summer institute experience and to help those who participate in it explore their almost inevitable question: "The writing project changed my life—what do I do now?"

Thirty years ago, at the first writing project summer institute in Berkeley, California, James Gray, founder of the National Writing Project, advanced a revolutionary idea: Teachers—not "experts" long removed from the classroom, not representatives selling a publisher's packaged program—are the best teachers of teachers.

This once radical notion has become part of the accepted wisdom of professional development. This summer, at 185 writing project sites across the nation, summer institute participants will demonstrate their practices for other outstanding teachers of writing. They'll also write, share their writing with their colleagues, and, in many cases, work toward writing and publishing professional pieces.

That passion so often seen in summer institute participants is captured in this 1974 photo of the first institute. Thirty years later, the summer institute experience still reinvigorates teachers unlike any other professional development experience.

This is the summer institute model, but it is not a model cruising on overdrive. As the articles in this section demonstrate, writing project leaders continue to find ways to enhance the summer institute experience and to help those who participate in it explore their almost inevitable question: "The writing project changed my life—what do I do now?"

See the related articles:

Reading in the Summer Institute: How, Why, and What
By Nick Coles and Richard Louth

Digging Deeper: Teaching Inquiry in the Summer Institute Demonstration
By Art Peterson

More Thoughts on Reading in the Summer Institute
By Lucy Ware

Beyond I Am
By Michael Taylor

Keith's Question
By Bill Connolly